If you’re finding that your Adwords account is underperforming and your current agency or in-house team aren’t checking it daily, then it may be stagnating. The worst thing you can do is leave your account to run itself as this will not only waste budget, but cost you conversions.
Although nothing is better for your account than spending the time optimising it frequently, a couple of quick optimisations will always suffice instead of leaving the issues to grow.
To help, we’ve outlined How to improve your Adwords account in 20 minutes.
Review Your Ad Extensions
Ad Extensions are a great way to make your ad stand out from your competitors; as they make your ads larger, give users more information and give you the ability to shout about your company’s USPs. They can all be applied under the ‘Ad Extensions’ tab in your Adwords at either Account, Campaign or Ad Group level.
Sitelink Extensions
Sitelink Extensions allow you to list up to six other areas of your site below your main ad, and are great for use on branded ads or broad searches. This helps to give the user more information, whilst giving them the option to go to a more specific page on the site.
Location Extensions
Location Extensions tie in with your Google My Business (or Google Places) listing and will show the address and telephone number of your business and also place a marker on Google’s map, which is usually positioned on the top right of the SERPs.
Callout Extensions
Callout Extensions allow you to include up to four extra snippets about the company to drive users to click your ad. These text bites do not link to pages on your site, so are best used for shouting about your USPs.
Social Extensions
Social Extensions allow you to promote how many followers you have on Google+. To enable this type of Extension you require a Google+ account with over 100 followers, which you can then link to your Adwords account.
Review Extensions
Review Extensions are the most difficult to obtain as they must be found online, cannot be taken from third party review sites, and must be from a credited source. The Review Extension will include a snippet from the text, and then a link to where the full text can be found.
Call Extensions
Call Extensions allow you to display your contact number alongside your ad, making it easy for a user to find your details without clicking through to the site and therefore saving you money. This type of Extension works great on a mobile, as it displays a ‘Call’ button, that when clicked will automatically call you.
Add Negative Keywords Based On Your Search Terms Report
If you’re using phrase match, broad match or broad match modifier keywords, then simply reviewing your Negative Keywords can save you money and ensure that your ads don’t appear for unrelated searches.
Below is a prime example of ads appearing for unrelated searches. For the search query ‘SEO Jobs In Birmingham’, two results that appear are offering SEO services and Day Care Centres. These are unlikely to be clicked, as they don’t answer the query searched, but if they are clicked the user will immediately bounce resulting in wasted budget and a high Bounce Rate.
The easiest way to add new Negative Keywords is through the Search Terms Report. To find this simply select the Keywords Tab > Details > Search Terms > All. This report can be viewed at Account, Campaign & Ad Group level.
To add Negative Keywords from this report, simply tick the search terms you’d like to prevent your ads from showing for and then click the ‘add as negative keyword’ button.
Implement Bid Adjustments For Locations
Bid adjustments allow you to bid more competitively in high converting locations or bid less competitively in those that struggle to convert.
Even if you’re targeting your ads to the entire UK (or even the World!), you can see which areas are converting the best in the Locations Report. To find this report, select a Campaign > Settings > Locations > View Location Reports > What Triggered Your Ad (Geographical) > View > City.
Using the Locations Report you can set bid adjustments to increase or decrease your bids in certain areas. Select the areas you’d like to increase/decrease the bids of and click Edit > Add targets and set bid adjustment. Input the percentage you’d like to adjust your bids by and click Add.
Pause Underperforming Keywords
Underperforming keywords are often the biggest issue for advertisers: they spend budget and give little in return: often increasing your overall CPA.
It’s very easy to find these keywords in your account. Simply use the Filter button in the keywords tab. You can filter based on a number of different metrics including Clicks, Conversions, Click Through Rate and Cost. We suggest filtering based on Conversions and pausing any keywords that have not converted, yet have spent what you consider to be a high amount. As with most features in Google Adwords, you can save your filters for future use.
Implementing these four features will not only save you money, but will also improve your conversions. You’re clearing out keywords that don’t work, pushing locations that do, stopping your ads showing for unrelated terms and finally increasing the size the your ads so that you can push more of your marketing messages.
Should you have any questions regarding Adwords Management then please contact Sam today; he’ll be more than happy to help.
